This exhibition brings together several years of work, including recent landscape paintings and a selection of abstract gradient drawings from a series exhibited in Germany in 2024 under the title Distant Pictures. The titles of the drawings are taken from notable films in the history of New Zealand cinema, beginning with the early period of contemporary filmmaking. The colour palette of each chromatic drawing is based on a film still or sequence from the opening of the selected film, reflecting the anticipation of watching a film as its narrative begins to unfold. The drawings also draw upon the physical elements of cinema—the image frame, the light of the projector beam, and the imperfections and material traces that appear on celluloid film.

Aspects of cinema have also informed the landscape paintings in this exhibition. Here, the connection to cinema lies in the often secondary role that landscape plays within film: locations and scenes that function as a background to a momentary sense of place, or environments encountered as passing views, providing a visual impression of moving through a landscape. It is this mode of observation that interests me in relation to my landscape subject matter—an attention directed towards the ordinary, the arbitrary, and the unspectacular. The paintings depict views taken from various locations along a five-kilometre stretch of road on the Moutere Highway, on the outskirts of Whakatū Nelson, where I reside.

My overall approach to painting and drawing is led by both process and an attention to materiality, while moving between the abstract and the figurative, the non-subject and the subject. Across both bodies of work, I am interested in how images emerge through acts of looking in ways that are seemingly incidental, or seen as passing observations that can become the basis for a sustained engagement with the painted or drawn image.

We have an opening to welcome the show on Friday, October 16th, 5-7pm. All are welcome to join us, Michael has travelled from Whakatū Nelson to be with us ..

To receive a preview catalogue please email hello@thisisspace.co.nz